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Teach People How You Want to be Treated

I’ve always prided myself on marching to the beat of my own drum, turning broken-down windows into gateways of great opportunities, blessings and fruition. My drum, my music and my heart have led me to realities fulfilled that were once nothing more than wishful thinking and daydreams on the SouthSide of the Chi.

But even to this day, life (luckily) and this journey still provide me with big, BIG lessons. Lessons, that sometimes, take a brick to the head for me to wake up and get it.

For quite some time now, I’ve bowed to one of my clients (basically on my hands and knees), giving up my normal cheerfulness and ease simply because the money was great. I even found myself writing to a close friend recently that “my happiness was being taken from me… and the worst part was that I was the one choosing to give it away.”

I was not being trusted much at all, not being spoken to like a respectable human being, and was never shown a single ounce of gratitude for the incredible value I brought to their organization and multi-million dollar business.

But yet, as this all persisted over consecutive months, it persisted because I allowed it. Because the money was great. Greater than the respect that I had for myself.

While I recently looked at the concept of teaching people how I want to be treated, and reflected with gratitude for my life’s years that have already passed… I realized that none of my happiest moments have ever come from NOT honoring myself.

They’ve never come when I chose NOT to march and dance to the beat of my own drum.

Recently, I’ve allowed part of my professional life to become very intoxicated, which started to permeate into my passions, my relationships, my happiness and into many of my conversations with others. (And I’m sure many of you can attest to this one).

A disease that once it stings someone, I now can see how it can affect them forever — destroying anything and everything that may come into their life.

All because we forget that we have ‘CHOICE.’ The choice to give up, or the choice to move on. The choice to be disrespected, or the choice to teach people how you want to be treated.

But then again, we can never expect others to treat us well, if we don’t first do it for ourselves. Much of what comes back to us is a direct correlation to what we allow.

And for quite some time now, my drum inside has stayed un-played and untapped because I allowed it.

But I can’t anymore, and I choose not to.

Today, I said sayonara to that client and breathed out a long, deep exhale of okayness, of cheerfulness and of relief.

I choose to let go and open up the space to allow more incredible things to come into my life.